My freezer friendly broccoli cheddar pot pie takes me back to the origin story of Fix Me a Little Lunch. Ten years ago we were still living in New Mexico. It made a lot of sense for me to bring my own lunch to work – there wasn’t really a convenient place for me to eat out, even if I’d wanted to and the food the university cafeteria where I worked was not great. I was hardly an expert on food prepping. The most food prepping I bothered with was to cut up some carrot and celery sticks to munch on as a snack. I relied heavily on frozen entrees for my lunches. I was also a vegetarian at the time, so stuck with Amy’s Organic line. One of my favorite entrees from Amy’s was the broccoli cheddar pot pie.
In my four years in New Mexico, I ate Amy’s Organics pretty much every day of the week for lunch. Fast forward to Oregon. I was still eating Amy’s Organics, but realizing, increasingly, that they were kind of pricey. We’d also signed up for a CSA and I was going to the farmer’s market pretty regularly in the summer time. I didn’t want to compost half of the produce I was getting, but was quickly drowning in veggies. That’s when I started browsing Pinterest and finding recipes that I could easily freeze and started fixing my own little lunches, using the incredible abundance that Southern Oregon has to offer.
I was thinking about food prepping and freezer meals a lot this last week. I had both broccoli and carrots starting to stack up on me in the fridge from the last two weeks of CSA shares. I decided it was time to make freezer friendly broccoli cheddar pot pies of my own. This recipe makes a lot of pot pie. In fact, I could easily get three 8 x 11 dishes of pot pie out of this freezer friendly cheddar pot pie recipe. Since it’s just the two of us, this is somewhere between four and six nights of dinner. I love having freezer meals on hand. For a few hours of prep on the weekend, I’ve reduced my weeknight stress by at least half. All I have to do is pull one of these out of the oven and bake it. This frees me up to do yoga, or drink wine on the patio, or play fetch with the dog.
These freezer friendly broccoli cheddar pot pies also used up all of the broccoli florets and most of the carrots from the last two weeks of CSA shares. I saved the broccoli stems for snacking on throughout the week.
Ingredients
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 heads broccoli, broccoli florets roughly chopped (save the stems for other uses)
- 5 carrots, peeled and chopped
- 4 – 5 small potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup flour
- 2 cups milk
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Fresh ground pepper to taste
- 3 ¾ cups flour
- 1 ½ cups butter, chilled and chopped into small pieces
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ¾ cup ice cold water
Instructions
- Make the crust by combining the flour, butter, salt, and ice cold water. Work the dough with a pastry cutter or your hands to combine all the ingredients. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Make the filling. Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the onion, broccoli, carrots and potatoes and cook, stirring frequently, until all ingredients are soft.
- Add the flour, making sure it coats all the vegetables, and cook for two minutes, stirring constantly. Add the milk and chicken stock, and simmer for 15 – 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Simmer until the sauce begins to thicken. Take the mixture off the heat and add the cheddar cheese, salt and pepper and stir until the cheese melts.
- Portion out the filling into 8 x 8 Pyrex dishes or individual ramekins. Roll out the chilled dough and cut to fit over each pot pie. At this point, you can bake the pot pies or freeze.
- Bake at 400 degrees for 30 – 35 minutes if not frozen and 40 – 50 minutes if frozen.
- Enjoy!
